Legal

Many e-commerce businesses haven’t had to worry about collecting sales tax in states where they didn’t have a physical presence, but things could rapidly change if one of two proposals moving through Congress is enacted. These proposals, the Marketplace Equity Act and the Marketplace Fairness Act, would require online retailers to collect sales taxes in many states.

Wal-Mart lost a bid to dismiss an 11-year-old gender discrimination lawsuit brought on behalf of workers in California after the U.S. Supreme Court barred a lawsuit representing Wal-Mart employees nationwide. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco said in an order last week that the plaintiffs have proposed a reduced class size to between one and several hundred thousand members.

Warner Bros. has refreshed its legal campaign against Amazon.com sellers it's accusing of selling unauthorized copies of its films and television shows in violation of the company's intellectual property rights. In a wave of lawsuits filed earlier this month, the entertainment giant charged a bevy of Amazon sellers with copyright infringement over the sale of its titles in the DVDs and BluRay formats.

Retailers incurred $2.70 in costs for every dollar in fraudulent transactions, according to the fourth annual LexisNexis True Cost of Fraud Study. The study uses the LexisNexis Fraud Multiplier, which calculates the "true cost" of fraud incurred by merchants. That cost incorporates chargebacks for merchandise, the fees and interest to financial institutions and payment processors as well as any replacement, redistribution or restocking fees incurred by a merchant. The study also reveals that retailers who offer mobile payments, e-commerce and sell internationally are becoming greater targets for fraud.

DSW said Thursday that it has been awarded $7.2 million as a result of litigation with its insurance carrier stemming from its credit card data breach in 2005. The $7.2 million award represents damages plus accrued interest.

An Oshkosh, Wis.-based catalog company has been ordered to pay $95,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) says Miles Kimball discriminated against a deaf worker. The EEOC says Laura Nejedlo asked to be trained in sign language for a new software program in 2007, but was turned down. Nejedlo says she was fired the next year, after 13 years with the company.

The National Retail Federation is opposing a proposed $7.25 billion settlement that Visa, MasterCard and major banks have agreed to pay retailers for alleged fee fixing. The retail trade association said Tuesday that its board has given approval for it to go to court to try to block the settlement. The NRF, which is not a party to the lawsuit that led to the settlement, says it is unsure whether outside groups will be allowed to intervene, or if the case qualifies as a class action.

Did you know that the incidence of online fraud is growing in the U.S.? And that more than 60 percent of business leaders recently surveyed by Bit9, a provider of trust-based solutions, believe they will be the target of a cyber attack in the next six months.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is not liable for selling bullets to an underage customer who then used the ammunition to commit murder. The lawsuit was filed by the relatives of Robert Williams, who was shot and killed by his girlfriend's son in 2006. The son, Xavier Zurndell Moore, was 20 years old at the time, and shot Williams with ammunition purchased at a local Walmart store. Federal law requires that a person be 21 to buy pistol ammunition.

A 2005 data breach that exposed transaction information from 1.4 million credit cards entitles DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse to $6.8 million in insurance coverage, according to a recent federal appellate court ruling. The award was made despite the fact that the retailer had not suffered losses directly attributable to the theft. The insurance company, National Union, a unit of New York-based Chartis, had alleged in part that it was not obligated to provide coverage because DSW "had not sustained loss 'resulting directly from' the theft of the computer information," making it an uncovered "indirect loss."